Rio De Janeiro

Jan 13th - Jan 22nd, 2001

Pre-Trip Information (tickets, visas, languages and clothes) 

Day 1 - The flight (Friday)

Day 2 - Where's my luggage? (Saturday)

Day 3 - Off to work... (Sunday)

Day 4 - We're going where? (Monday)

Day 5 - A full day of Buzios (Tuesday)

Day 6 - Back to Rio (Wednesday)

Day 7 - Impanema and Posto 10 (Thursday)

Day 8 - Looking for the same real estate and Rock in Rio (Friday)

Day 9 - Pao de Asucar-Sugar Loaf (Saturday)

Day 10 - The flight home (Sunday)

Click on the pictures for Full Size!

Pre-Trip

1) Tickets - tickets where $640 online @ www.brol.com, tickets seem to get to be as low as $520.  www.brol.com was quick and seem to have pretty good prices.  Be careful to know if the taxes are paid.  My friend stated there was an exit tax of $75R, but I never had to pay it because my tickets were marked tax paid.  Check with your ticketing agency to find out if you will have to pay any additional fees.

2) Visa - yes, you need a visa to enter into Brazil.  It cost $45 Reais (pronounced Hey-I-s) and the exchange rate for a dollar to Real is almost a perfect 2:1 (it was 1.93 - 1 from the City Bank ATM's).  It takes a whole page in your passport so it's pretty cool.  Also, you can't get a passport via mail and you need to have your travel itinerary to get it.  I let brol.com take care of it and they took they're fair share of money to do it, but I didn't have to take a day off to go to Chicago.  It took about a week to get the visa, but they say you should give at least 3 weeks to get your visa.  The visa is then good for two 90-day trips to brazil in each of the next 5 years.  This is a tourist visa and states you can not work while in Brazil, but that seemed pretty loose.  If your going to a convention, just get a tourist visa.  Furthermore, I was told that Brazil offers amnesty to anyone who resides in Brazil for over one year and then you can stay for as long as you want as a citizen or Brazil.

3) Language - it's Portuguese, and it's not Spanish, it's not really closed to Spanish.  If you know Spanish, you'll find it odd you can read everything, understand no one.  I'm not saying it won't help.  You'll find a good number of people speak at least English or Spanish beyond Portuguese.  Always start with English, it works more than you'd expect.  Brazilians and Argentineans don't always have the best relations and they tend to find it offensive if you assume they speak Spanish.  If you're at a club, use Spanish as a last resort.  Just a couple of hits,  R's = H's, D's = J's.

4) What to wear - to the beach, anything goes.  Brazilians tend to wear as little as possible.  But basic Bermudas work.  At the clubs, Rio is still a big city.  And with any big city, if you're going out to the popular clubs you should look good, but nothing over the top.  Nice jeans or kakis worked everywhere.  Basically figure out the most comfortable thing to wear and that's it.  Flip-flops for you feet all day.

Day 1- The Flight

The trip started with a scheduled flight out of Madison, WI (MSN) at 6:45pm...which, after a my gracious ride to the airport, Glas, left...the Canada Regional Flight to O'Hare (ORD) flight quickly became delayed from a 6:45pm flight to a 7:00pm flight to a 7:15pm flight to a 7:20pm.  The flight from O'Hare to Sao Paulo left Chicago at 9:xxPM and I started wondering if  I was going to make Sao Paulo.  At about 7:20 they finally boarded the plane and took us to Chicago.  From there I didn't get to stop getting on the plane to Sao Paulo, it was plane to plane.  But I made it.  Some 10 hours in a Boeing 777 to look forward to.  The back of the plane was fairly empty so each passenger got his/her own row.  The coolest thing was the little screens on the seats...with the map function.  The map gave the air speed, the altitude, the tail wind, the current time, time to destination, time at destination, out side air temperature and a tracking map with a little plane on it.  The flight over the US was pretty cool as it had a light cloud cover over most of the states and the cities lights would show up on the top of the clouds making it was to figure out what cities where were with the little map.  I was hoping to fly over Cuba, but apparently that doesn't happen.  But on the plus side, we did get to have a 128mph tailwind going down.  The dinner was an exciting chicken teriyaki medley, but really it was pretty good, but the 5 little bottles of Bacardi may have had something to do with that.  Sleep on the plane was fairly minimal, and the high quality movies (I can't remember what they were, I'll think of it) kept me almost awake the whole flight.  Breakfast was nothing to write home about, so I won't.  Just know the sun is really really really f*#king bright on a plane with was dark for the last 8 hours.  Flying over Brazil isn't something you can do in an hour, it's like 6 hours of Brazil, and most of it is forests...which from 5 miles and at 600 mph, looks like a big green carpet.  Only when we got close to Sao Paulo could you make out farms...but then we have to move to day 2 because I didn't land until Saturday morning.  Sorry there are no pictures, but the cameras where in the suitcase.  Which brings us to...

Day 2 - Where's my luggage?

Ok, landed in Sao Paulo and it was out right hot in the airport.  Muggy and the ugly orange which seemed to indicate they last redecorating was done sometime in the late 60's or early 70's.  It was at this point when the United person came to guide me to my connection to Rio which I figured out my Spanish wasn't going to help me with too much Portuguese.  But most people in the airport speech Portuguese, Spanish, and English.  She lead me to the connection to Rio and without much delay I was on my way.   I got to Rio about 1:45pm, right on time and proceeded to the baggage claim.  As the title of this day suggests, I sat and waited watching everyone else pick up their luggage.  No blue, just bought at shopko travel pack.  Oh, and I didn't have any carry on.  So there I was in Brazil, and in jeans, and without a toothbrush.  I talked to the United guy and asked him where my bag was.  After a couple of minutes he came back and said it's in Chicago still, it will be here tomorrow.  In the mean time I'll give you $50US to get some clothes.  $50US?  No, I don't have a toothbrush, toothpaste, clothes, swim wear, nothing.  Ok, $100US, you spend what you need on clothes here on your credit card and we'll send you a check.  Cool, free money, but no clothes.  Now, they make textiles in Brazil.  Clothes are really cheap if you don't get designer labels.  And $100US is $200R, you can live a week in Rio on $200R if your rent is paid and all you do is sit on beach ($3R for a chair, 6 Skols at $1.50R for a total of $6R, two frango (chicken) sandu`iches for $6R and dinner for $10R/day or $25R/day, still leaving you $75R for evenings out, which generally cost about $25R).  Bonus.  Also, just so you know, the button you press is like a lottery, if it's green you go through, if it's red, you get searched.  Since I didn't have a bag, I didn't have to press the button.  Drat.  I got out to the airport, wondering if I'd have a ride.  Just a I exited, Jon came in.  Extra bonus.

So, I borrow a pair of short from Jon (Miles' bro) and we head to the beach, on the bus.  The bus, after reading so much about how horrible it was, was crowded and kind of like a NYC subway with out air-conditioning in 87°F weather.  But it was nothing too bad.  It cost $1R per trip.  People in Brazil didn't seem to like to deal with centavos (change) unless it was at least 50 centavos, and even then, they'd look at you strange if you pulled out change.  The first beach we hit was Barra, south of Leblon and about 20 minutes by bus.  The land mark, Pepe.  Pepe is a beach restaurant with some great food.  The waves where rolling about 6 feet + or - a foot or so.  It was great, but you could surely find the white guy.  It wasn't like a game of Where's Waldo?  Got a chair and began work. 

The club basically has beds around it instead of chairs.  Pretty cool, but also as cool, instead of paying each round, they issued you a card and that card kept track of how much you spent.  The bartender would swipe the card and it would be added to your total.  You had to pay when you left and spend at least $20R.  This is also where I got my first Brazilian caipirinha, a drink made from sugar, limes and cachaça.  Yummy.  It was not the last caipirinha I'd have...  Dancing went on for some time, when at of the crowd comes a camera.  Yes it was Wild on E! doing their special on Rio!  Super fantastic bonus.  One day in Rio, and can't wait to stay.  We left the club (which the credit card machine was down, so we scraped enough money - about $100R - to get out of the club) around 4am.

Day 3 - Off to Work

On the tan that is...I had to wait for my luggage from the airport.  It finally showed up about 3:30pm.  Jon and Andre left me to make my way to the beach on the bus by myself.  After getting my luggage, I followed the sketchy directions to the bus stop and kept my eye open for familiar landmarks we had passed by yesterday.  Got off the bus in exactly the right spot!  It was another rough day at work, becoming more and more familiar with Skol, the Brazilian beer in a can.  Starting to learn some words, like Obrigato (thank you) and Skol (skol beer) and some basic numbers.  I've found these words are all you really need to know in Brazil.  For dinner we went out for pizza (yes, pizza is everywhere) and chopp (another key word...pronounced SH-oh-p).  This is draft beer.  Both Skol and Brahma (the tap beer of Brazil) taste like Bud or some other weak American Pilsner.  There is very little imported beer.  But, back to pizza.  The pizza has no tomato sauce.  If you ask for tomato sauce, they bring you ketchup.  But it's very good.  We were going to go to a samba school this night but had to wait for Barbara and Boki.  They couldn't find the restaurant and by the time we gave up and went to the samba school, it was too late.

Day 4 - We're going Where?

Day 5 - A whole day at the beach.  

Dinner at David's, more fish, more salt.  Also, see the pictures of Casa Seven.  Also, climbing up on a rock out cropping, I managed to get a spiny urchin's spines in my foot and my hand.  Gotta be careful in the water.  Thanks to the crafty surgical needle and Regina back at casa, I recovered fully.

Our host, Jorge at Casa Seven.

Casa Seven from the water taxi.

The view from the balcony.

The enterance to the hotel.

Sunset over Buzios.

Day 6 - A day on the boat

Took the Queen Lory out to see the beaches.  Great fun, great sun burnt.  Back to Rio and back out to the clubs looking for Britney Spears.  She stated at the Internacial and went to a club in Barra, not in Rio where we went.  Dancing all funky like.

Just another beach...but the water was really cold if that make you feel better.

Buzios, the city.  Notice the blue pay phones on the left.  The "big ears".

John driving the Fiat down the driveway to Casa Seven for the last time.  Yes, we did have to walk up this hill, and yes it is that steep.

On the ride home to Rio

Day 7 - Impanema and Poste 10

This is the greatest spot on earth, I don't know who pays these girls to sit on the beach all day, but they do.  it's a sit not to be missed at Rio.  Worked all day.  Went to the all you can eat buffet thing in Brazil and stuffed myself, like a plate of sashimi and all kinds of beef.  Then finally, I hit Copacabana, and guess what.  You can miss it.  This was also the night for BarDot, and Britney Spears playing at Rock in Rio.  I heard the show was less then spectacular, but with the going away gig, I missed it. 

Day 8 - Looking for the same real estate

Found basically the same spot at Poste 10 as we did the other day, and ironically, some of the same girls.  Then for the night, left about 4pm for Rock in Rio, the Brazilian equivalent to Woodstock for some Brazilian bands and Dave Matthews, Sheryl Crow and Neil Young.  It was a sweet time.  You've never seen a concert until you've been to one with 200,000 screaming Brazilians.

Because I can...Here Download these MP3's from Rock In Rio...

Day 9 - Sugar Loaf

Took the trip to Sugar Loaf solo.  It's worth going, but not the best part of the trip.  Too much tourist, not enough hot girls in bikinis.  This is the only day I didn't go sit on the beach.  I sat at Caneco 70 in Leblon (a restaurant next to Poste 11) and spent the last day hanging out. 

Day 10 - Cancelled flights, again.

Flight 440 to Sao Paulo was cancelled.  Caught an earlier flight to Sao Paulo and made my connection.  There was  very helpful guy who dragged me around.  Customs out was nothing.  Security was another thing.  But since we needed to catch a flight, it was very rushed.  It's not like the states where they ask you if you packed the bags, and you say yes.  They ask who packed your bags, when did you pack your bags, who's been in control of the bags, is there anything electronic in the bags, is there any liquids in the bag (of course, leave with the $5.84R bottle of cacasa, never), is the bottle securely packed (of course, most secure thing in the bag), where did you come from (Rio), what's your flight number, where's your passport....you get the idea, they want to know.  On the flight to Chicago, I met Natia, a Senior outside hitter from Brazil who was playing for Texas, and Antonio, the gentleman sitting next to me on the plane.  After landing in Chicago, I had to clear the US customs.  Wasn't hard, you filled out on form you go though.  I claimed I brought like $50US of stuff, and I bet it was pretty close.  Back home at 9:40am and a $13US cab ride home made me remember why I should have stayed.

Key Vocabulary Words :

amigo/amiga - friend

cachaça - sugar cane liquor

caipirinha - a drink made with cachaça poured over muddled sugar, limes and ice.

Chopp - draft/tap beer, usually Brahma

gata(s) - girls (also see garotas)

mar - sea/ocean

muito - very much

obrigato(a) - thank you, gentlemen use an o, gatas use an a ending.

Real / Reais - Brazilian currency.  As of Jan 24, 2001, about $1.94R = $1US

Skol - a particular can of beer

tchau - good bye.

Praia - beach

Vascho - a Rio football team, say their your team.